[Info-vax] Error Messages in Basic - %BASIC-E-PARMODNOT, mode for parameter <n> of routine <procedure-name> not as declared

[Neil Rieck]

On Sunday, June 9, 2019 at 2:15:02 PM UTC-4, Stephen Hoffman wrote:

> 
> Ayup.  There are additional wrinkles that can arise when porting some 
> application code among different compilers and different platforms, too.
> 
> There are platforms and tools which dispense with the mental focus and 
> the glue code that developers need expend around these storage 
> allocations, and which can be quite nice to work with.
> 
> These akin to OpenVMS data descriptors, but with better flexibility, 
> with less fiddly data access and conversions, and with encodings and 
> other details evolved forward by a couple of decades.
> 
> With easy ways to convert between the formats and the encodings, well 
> past LIB$CVT_DX_DX and suchlike.
> 
> Easier to update the size of and the internal organization of the 
> associated data without requiring application changes, too.
> 
> And with less glue code involved.
> 
> BASIC is an obvious candidate for related updates, though the changes 
> required would be rather more endemic and not isolated to BASIC.
> 
> VSI has more than a little (other) work ahead, of course.
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Pure Personal Opinion | HoffmanLabs LLC

If VSI is smart (and I think they are) they will not change a thing with VMS-BASIC. I doubt many organizations are still using this language but for those that are, the programmers already know how to get around most of the warts. On top of that, compiler changes sometimes make it difficult to compile old code (without renovation) so new or changed features would need to be enabled with an option statement or command line parameter.


Neil Rieck
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.